跟讀練習: What Will TV Look Like In 3 Years? - 通過影片學習英語口語

You'll have a world where it's content without borders, where AI will allow platforms to allow a consumer to watch the content in their native language.

Live works. People want live events. They want live news, and they particularly want live sports. They want things that AI is not going to be able to replicate.

Alex Sherman: Back in 2023, Lillian and I spoke to some of the biggest names in the media business. We wanted to know what they thought the television industry would look like in three years.

Unknown: We heard a lot of predictions, some of which did happen, like media mergers and spinouts, expanded streaming bundles, and the growth of AI.

Alex Sherman: Other predictions didn't age as well. We probably won't be watching TV in the metaverse anytime soon, and Apple still isn't making TV sets.

Unknown: Now, three years later, we wanted to revisit this idea, talk to the top names in the media industry, some from last time and some new voices, to hear what they think the future of TV will look like three years from now.

Alex Sherman: We asked the same five questions to 10 industry leaders to hear their takes on sports, cord cutting, streaming, mergers, and more.

Unknown: Here's what they had to say.

In three years, will we have hit a floor on cable TV subscribers, or will cable subs just keep going lower and lower each year?

I don't think we'll have a floor. I think I do think it will continue to decline, and it'll probably do so every year until sports rights eventually disappear from cable, but I think that's a that's at least a decade off.

Cost of free over the air retrans is now over $30 per customer for something that's essentially free. But what you're seeing already is all of that broadcast content and cable content is really all available inside of these apps, and it's available inside of big streaming bundles that I think will develop over time.

Nothing truly goes to zero. So somewhere in America, there's probably someone paying for AOL dial-up or or renting a DVD from the last blockbuster, which by the way is in Bend, Oregon. But the direction of travel is unmistakable. I I think it's difficult to reverse the trend that we're seeing of consumers choosing to consume content on platforms other than linear television. I think that trend continues. How fast, frankly, we haven't been right as an industry to date. It hasn't been quite as fast and as aggressive as maybe we were forecasting even four or five years ago.

In three years, what's one thing that will become a TV industry standard that doesn't exist today?

Personalization exists today, but I'm going to say three years from now, you're going to see it pretty much everywhere. Meaning networks are providing the right content to the right user at the right time.

I think you'll see ads get way more useful and relevant the same way they have on social media. If you think about the experience today on television, it still largely feels like the ads are not personalized, and you can imagine a world where you can see such hyper personalization that really it gets to a place where what you see as an ad doesn't even feel disruptive or like friction. It actually just feels like wow, that was really helpful and useful because you know me so well.

Simultaneous day and date global releases to us seem to be a really important evolution in the television ecosystem. Of course, there's still going to be shows that premiere primarily in one market, one territory-North America or in Asia or Europe. But I think increasingly, what you're seeing is, you know, the biggest shows are premiering everywhere in the world at the same time.

See more and more podcasters and live streaming shows being licensed to cable networks, perhaps even broadcast networks, and I think that that will become much more of a TV industry standard.

I think we'll continue to see major advancements in language, right? And so I think you'll have a world where it's content without borders, where AI will allow platforms to allow a consumer to watch the content in their native language.

Will there be a major government action, like a deal blocked or a forced breakup, that prevents a big tech company from getting bigger in the entertainment industry?

Big tech has lost a lot of goodwill among the left and Democrats, and so I think that those big tech companies will be in for a lot of scrutiny and will find going much more difficult. But I think that depends what happens in the next two elections in 26 and 28, and who knows exactly what will happen. But I think that's the that's the danger for them.

Goal isn't bigger and better, and so I think what we're going to see is a consumer. And a industry backlash to some of these deals that will then kind of change the course. I think we're starting to see some of that even recently with the letter that was submitted by 1000 professionals in Hollywood pushing back at the Paramount deal. I think we'll continue to see that kind of thing, and that will shape how decisions are made. The The convergence between Silicon Valley tech and Hollywood, it's already happened. You know, the shift has happened. I mean, if you look at the platforms that are taking the highest share of time spent attention, it's tech platforms. If you look at who has the highest share of television viewing in the living room. It's YouTube.

Washington has a way of surprising everybody. What I do think is that scale alone won't guarantee success. The companies that'll win over the next decade will be the ones that consumers trust, that advertisers value, and really that creators actually want to partner with.

Alex Sherman: Are we in a sports viewership ratings bubble? Will the big sports, NFL, NBA, MLB, will those ratings be lower in three years than they are today?

Unknown: I believe the answer is a a fast no. First off, measurement is getting better and much more accurate, including, of course, out of home and and now streaming usage being accounted for. So so that's obviously very helpful.

But but Alex, every time the industry expects a downturn, numbers continue up and to the right.

It's really important to understand that Nielsen has made some methodological improvements that impact sports and everything in general. But in particular, sports, the number one thing there is we've expanded our out-of-home measurement. And with sports, it's really, really important because as we've added markets to measurement, home markets are super important to sports rate. So we have seen increases directly attributable to that enhancement that you know we we expect to continue, but we won't see a big year-to-year bump.

I think we will get to a point of saturation again. Don't know if this is true. This is a slightly adjacent industry for me, but I think every industry has a ceiling and available audience. I think with the recent distribution deals that have broadened the number of platforms where this content is distributed, I think you get to a ceiling. I think You're going to continue to see ratings go up. Maybe that's a little bit of a mix of short-form content, long-form content, immersive capabilities of bringing you into the stadium, but I think it's the one area that's shown really isn't the same to be able to watch it after the fact, and I think it's going to continue to drive readings.

I mean, the reality is that that live works. People want live events, they want live news, and they particularly want live sports. They want things that AI is not going to be able to replicate, and I think so. Live sports is going to continue to be very strong.

Live sports remains one of the last true mass reach experiences in our culture. in In a fragmented world, sports still create communal moments. Families watch them together.

Friends text each other in real time, and as we're seeing entire cities change moods based on outcomes. So, so I suspect premium sports remain incredibly valuable, perhaps even more than today.

What is another streaming service, perhaps it doesn't even exist yet, that you think will gain significant market share three years from now. Likely a service that we're not thinking of today, but it could be more broadly services that are here today and are expanding the capability of how they engage and connect with audiences, as well as expanding those experiences.

The real opportunity is for somebody who can pull it all together to be an aggregator of all these different services, much the way that cable TV was originally created, to provide value and utility, to be able to provide a bundle of services at a discounted rate, I think that's the opportunity for a new entrant into the space.

We'll say that we see TikTok videos getting longer and longer, and I think that's a trend that will continue, and I also think that niche casting is also going to continue, and you will see lots of very small communities play very big roles across all of these these services.

But platforms like Roku Channel, Tubi, Pluto, we've seen a tremendous adoption and increase in usage across those those services, and really we don't see a slowing down of that because as they continue to enhance the services and and the different companies add more content to them, original content, and you know as as these fast channels gain in population. We think that's an area to really keep an eye on.

Epic Games. Clearly, the Walt Disney Company is invested here.

We made a 1.5 billion dollar investment in in Epic Games. But from my perspective, really, Alex, the the possibilities to connect gaming experiences with both entertainment and and and sports content, including potentially live events, are endless.

Do I really think that a not an existing a streamer we've never heard of is going to be meaningfully competitive in long-form video three years from now? No, I don't think so.

As we were talking to these executives, major shifts were already playing out in the media world. A Alex Sherman: bidding war between Netflix and Paramount over Warner Brothers Discovery ended, with Paramount poised to take over Warner Brothers. But now that deal is in limbo as a judge decides if it's legal. And the company we spoke to for this piece, Roku, is being acquired by Fox in a deal worth $22 billion. So, what will the future of TV look like? Check back with us in another three years.